From Military Dictatorship to the Institutional Reparation at Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research. Exonerations, Exiles and the Creation of the Memory Committee

Abstract

This paper deals with the political repression carried out at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) during the last military dictatorship in Argentina and the first experience to repair the files of murdered and/or disappeared people that CONICET began recently. In addition to the bibliographic and documental review, we interviewed key informants and built a matrix with primary data on the repression victims in the organization based on a detailed review of over 8,000 institutional resolutions between 1973 and 1983. The matrix arrived at a total of 2,843 cases, 78% of which corresponded to forced evictions (mass layoffs and license requests) and 21% to dismissals by the organization (dismissals, layoffs and other measures). The results obtained allow us to measure the impact of the dictatorship on Argentina’s main scientific organization, which had not been studied before.

Argentina; military dictatorship; scientific system; repression; institutional reparation